302 Days
by DeejayMil
Summary: Spencer Reid finally has his happily ever after. It's a pity he had to die to get there. "Nine. On the ninth day he closes his eyes in his own personal hell, and when he opens them he's in his apartment and the light is so bright his eyes burn with it." - Nominated for the 2015 Profiler's Choice Awards - Best Angst
1. 34 Days

**34 Days**

 **.**

 **.**

On the fifth day, Spencer Reid opens his eyes to darkness.

He screams until he can't scream anymore, his throat raw and swollen.

* * *

They realize he's missing on the third day when 10am comes and goes and his desk remains silent.

"He's never late," JJ murmurs as she stirs her coffee with a concerned frown.

Garcia runs a search for his phone and closes her eyes for a moment when it comes up empty.

Morgan knocks twice on his door and then kicks it in. He remembers the price of being late, and he remembers the texture of a teammate's blood on his hands.

Hotch doesn't even knock before he walks into Strauss's office. His face is calm but his hands betray his anxiety as he grips his phone with white knuckles. "We have a problem," he tells her.

* * *

The second day is a Sunday and Emily calls him to see if he wants to catch a movie. He doesn't pick up and she shrugs and figures he's lost in a book.

So she rings JJ and they laugh and talk about dating. She remembers feeling glad that JJ came out instead of him.

She never forgives herself for that.

* * *

On the twelfth day Hotch forces Prentiss to leave the office and get some sleep, and instead she finds her way to his apartment and lets herself in.

Running her hands against the embossed covers of the books on his shelf, she reads every title reverently. Years from now she'd have trouble remembering the sound of his voice, but she never forgets those titles.

He finds her laying on his bed asleep with tacky trails of tears on her cheeks.

He lays next to her and tells her about his childhood and the different types of tears the human body is able to produce.

She wakes the next day with a headache and the melancholy sensation of having lost something.

* * *

On the fourth day there's light and he keeps himself calm by documenting his surroundings.

 _One._ Chair. Lightbulb.

 _Two._ The smallest prime number. Two hinges on the heavy steel door. Two years since Foyet.

 _Three._ Three bars on the window. Oaths are repeated three times, traditionally. The cost of his last coffee. Three barleycorns in an inch, three feet in a yard, three miles in a league.

 _Four._ The word four has the same amount of letters as its value, the only number in the English language to do so. His cell is four metres by four metres. There are four wings on a bee, and four leaves on a clover, if you're lucky. He doesn't feel lucky.

 _Five._ Five days since he'd said goodbye to his team. A pentasyllabic word has five syllables, like the word pentasyllabic itself.

 _Six._ He misses his team.

* * *

On the sixteenth day, they refuse to give up hope. Prentiss hasn't been home since it begun. JJ rings Will and asks to speak to Henry, but when she hears his voice all she can do is cry.

They find leads, but in the end the trail goes cold and they're left with nothing.

* * *

 _Nine. On the ninth day he closes his eyes in his own personal hell, and when he opens them he's in his apartment and the light is so bright his eyes burn with it._

* * *

 _He's cleaner than he was a day ago, and his skin shows no signs of the injuries he knows he'd sustained._

 _He stands hesitantly and walks around the apartment, noting the crime scene tape across the door, and that someone, probably JJ, has cleaned the perishables out of his fridge._

 _When he opens the fridge door the motor hums and chokes uncertainly. He turns on a tap and when he turns around the tap is off and the sink is dry. He presses his face against the cool glass of the window, and thinks about his breath misting the glass._

 _He stands like that for hours until the sun goes down, and then he returns to the spot on the floor he'd woken up on and watches the light of the traffic flicker across his ceiling._

* * *

When Aaron Hotchner receives a lock of his youngest agent's hair in a priority mail package it's the thirty-fourth day.


	2. 42 Days

**42 Days**

 **.**

 **.**

On the forty-first day JJ calls her contact at the media networks and tells him to pull the missing person report.

Rossi offers to do it, but she can see the strain of holding the team together is starting to show on the older agent's face, and she declines with what she hopes is a smile.

They're all pretending these days.

* * *

 _He spends countless days pacing his empty apartment. After Emily, no one visits anymore and he's left alone with his thoughts._

 _He finds a perverse kind of joy in that he can make the pipes rattle in the wall, and amuses himself by tapping out messages in code to his neighbours. They don't seem to get the meaning, even when he painstakingly taps out a polite request for the floor up to turn down their TV, or at least change the channel to something slightly more entertaining._

 _His TV had shorted out when he'd touched it, and he'd avoided touching any electronics after that._

 _When he tries to read his books the pages slip through his fingers and the text is a jumbled mess of unreadable symbols. He thinks out of everything he's lost, it's language that hurts the most._

* * *

Their first breakthrough comes on the thirty-sixth day.

The postage on the stamp leads them to a sleepy backwater in Georgia. The jet ride is silent and tense and memories of a previous Georgia visit haunt them.

Emily dares to think that maybe, once again, they'll bring him home from here.

Hotch knows better but he can see her hope in the set of her shoulder, and it makes him feel tired and old.

The lady at the post office can't help them with placing the return address but she gives them the surveillance footage of the day it was posted.

They narrow it down to three people, all male and Caucasian. Morgan has a gut feeling about the smallest of the three, a man so painfully average he wouldn't normally give him the time of day.

The day it was posted was thirty days after the disappearance of Doctor Spencer Reid.

* * *

 _He doesn't really sleep, not anymore, but he can fade himself out enough that time moves quickly past him._

 _He knows he should be doing something. Moving on, trying to leave his apartment, anything really, but he can't find the strength to care about any of it. He stares for ages at a picture of him and Henry at Halloween taped to the fridge and feels nothing._

 _He thinks maybe if he tries hard enough, he can fade away entirely._

* * *

Garcia finds the men in the footage and they're given warrants with almost obscene haste. No judge likes the idea of a kidnapped fed in their town and the atmosphere is ugly.

Two houses come up empty, the men with watertight alibis. The third is empty, stripped clean, and there's nothing to find except a single casefile sitting atop a shoebox in the middle of the master bedroom.

The casefile is for a case Hotch and Gideon had worked together years ago. Missing teenage girls ranging across states. They'd had suspects but had never closed the case. They'd never found the bodies either.

Hotch opens the shoebox with hands that shake and when he sees the photos within, he thinks what he's feeling might be relief.

When Morgan sees the photos he vomits until his gut aches with the force of it. He'll forevermore associate the taste of Chow Mein with the image of his friend slumped stiffly on a wooden chair, eyes open and as empty as every other victim they'd seen previously.

* * *

They declare death in _absentia_ on the forty-second day.

JJ listens to the bored sounding man on the phone explaining how the photos would be considered proof enough of the death of Spencer William Reid even in the absence of a body. She thinks to herself that she could have done it so much better.

She'd given enough notice of death to family and friends over the years, she could list everything the man had done wrong.

 _Try to explain and make sense of the tragedy._ Not refer to their friend constantly as _the deceased_.

 _Always deliver bad news in person._ How can he possibly judge their reaction from over a phone?

 _Skip the euphemisms._ They make no one feel better except the person who says them.

 _Never abandon anyone unless they have someone else to hold onto_.

When she hangs up the phone she's alone.

It hits her for the first time that this is how he died.

Alone.

* * *

 _He thinks maybe this time that he'd managed to fade away for days, judging by the phase of the moon as he studies it through the window. He's not really sure what his endgame is here but he hopes it comes soon._

 _When he turns around, Maeve is standing behind him and even with his newfound disregard for everything, his breath is taken away by how beautiful she is._

 _"Oh Spencer," she whispers, stepping forward and reaching out for him._

 _It's the first time he's felt a human touch in almost two months._

 _It's the first time he's ever touched her._

 _It's perfect._

* * *

 _She takes his hand and pulls him away from the apartment that has become his prison, and they're suddenly standing in the library from his dreams._

 _He wants to run his fingers over the covers of the books surrounding them, to let the book settle easily into his hands and let his eyes rake over the contents, but he's trapped by fear._

 _Fear that the pages will be as jumbled as the ones at home._

 _And a sick, all-encompassing terror that if he walks away from Maeve, he'll never find her again._

 _"You can read them," she says softly, following his gaze. "They're in our world, not theirs. The library of the lost and forgotten."_

 _His voice is husky and dry from disuse, oddly considering he hardly has a physical throat to clear anymore. "Why am I here?"_

 _Maeve watches him with a smile that doesn't make the sadness in her eyes any less and tightens her grip on his hand. "You died, Spence. I don't know how. I'm glad I don't." She looks away from him and he thinks he can see guilt and loneliness in equal parts of her expression._

 _"Why are you here?" he asks._

 _"I was waiting for a second chance. I didn't expect it so soon."_

* * *

They finally hold his funeral and no one cries. Garcia figures it's because none of them have the energy left.

The coffin they lower into the ground is empty and when she looks about at her team, she doesn't see grief.

All she sees is anger.

* * *

 _Maeve shows him how to move sideways into other parts of the world, but his travel is sorely limited. He can move from his apartment to the library with ease, simply by feeling the pull of his attachment to each place._

 _When he feels an unfamiliar tug in his chest he doesn't think, just follows._

 _He's standing next to Morgan and they're lowering a flag-draped coffin into the ground, the crowd silent and ominous._

 _Seeing them so suddenly is unreal and he paces back and forth in front of them, greedily drinking in every detail. They're older than he's ever seen them, and he counts every line on their faces that wasn't there before, adding them to the tally of what his friends have given him._

 _His mother isn't there and he can't focus on why that might be without his heart feeling like it's twisting in his chest._

 _Maeve is standing by JJ, her face expressionless as she watches him. He eventually moves next to her and watches as the crowd disperses. His team stay, watching the coffin disappear under rich dark soil._

 _"I was murdered, Maeve," he says eventually. She looks away from him, and he thinks it's so he can't see her cry._

 _"Who?" she whispers after a long silence._

 _"I don't know. Not yet." He watches as Hotch puts an arm around JJ and finally leads her away, the gloom deepening around them. "But I will."_

 _Closure will be his final gift to his team._


	3. 68 Days

**68 Days**

 **.**

 **.**

Rossi organizes Reid's apartment.

Letters and diaries and pages filled with Spencer's small, cramped handwriting go to his mother. He finds presents bought for Henry's birthday, never to be wrapped, and puts them aside for JJ with a heavy heart. Everything else he carefully seals into boxes, ready to be stored in his basement.

Logically he knows that Spencer Reid is never coming home.

But he's ready for the possibility.

* * *

 _He spends what he feels is a week with Maeve, enjoying the sound of her voice and the sensation of her in his arms, and thinks that he's never been happier. But haunting him is the knowledge that for him to get this happy ending, he had to die, and he thinks that's the sickest irony he's ever known._

 _He can feel grief that isn't his own dragging at him, and eventually the feel of it begins to tear him apart until not even the quiet solitude of laying with Maeve can distract him._

 _He tries to go to his apartment and finds himself in an unfamiliar basement, surrounded by boxes with his name carefully scrawled on the side in Rossi's meticulous handwriting. He doesn't spend long there, the uncomfortable sensation of his life packed into boxes, and instead tries to follow the thin threads of grief._

 _He's in the bullpen, and it's been three months since he died._

* * *

The photos were a taunt, the murderer poking them in the chest and crowing about what he'd achieved.

There's a permanent whiteboard set up in the conference room with the detail of Reid's case on it, on wheels so they can turn it blank side out when Garcia enters the room. She's the only one who hasn't looked at the photos and they want to keep it that way.

Morgan spends the longest out of all of them studying the photos and the information taped to that board, every moment he's not focusing on other cases.

This was personal, intensely personal. The unsub didn't just kill their friend; he mocked them about it. Bragged, _look what I did! Look what I've done, and what I did, and what I'll do again unless you catch me._

The other missing girls have nothing in common with Spencer Reid, nothing at all. The killer changed his method, changed his type, just to settle an imagined score with the BAU.

Morgan stares at the photos endlessly and patiently waits for the day he gets to settle his own score.

* * *

 _His team isn't there, probably working a case, so he wanders along halls that are achingly familiar until he finds himself at Garcia's office. He walks in and she's there and so close that he can feel his heart breaking in his chest._

 _He settles himself on the desk, and silently watches her, pretending for a moment that it's three months ago and nothing has changed._

* * *

She's looking up the casefile they'd found with the photos for what feels like the millionth time, clicking numbly through the photos of the suspects they'd interviewed. One of them looks vaguely familiar, almost like the man from the surveillance tape, and she pauses on his photo.

Her phone rings at the exact same time the room hums with electricity, surges, and goes dark.

* * *

 _The last time he'd seen that face, he was tied to a chair and two days away from his last breath._

 _His sudden anger is echoed in the surge of power around him._

 _He's not there when the room goes dark and Garcia shrieks in surprise._

* * *

 _He doesn't know where he is anymore, but it's dark and cold and he's frozen with the idea that he's trapped here and this is where he'll spend his eternity. The dark doesn't frighten him so much now he's dead, but the idea that he's going to fail to say goodbye to Maeve twice paralyses him._

 _He thinks of her and a heart he no longer possesses beats with love for her, until she's suddenly there in his arms. They're both crying and he doesn't know why, doesn't know what happened to make him lose control like this._

 _She takes him back to the library and he thanks her for saving him from the dark, and she looks at him with an expression that's both confused and sad and doesn't stop sobbing._

 _He looks around the library and thinks, if this is my personal heaven, does she see the same as I do?_

 _Or is hers different?_

* * *

 _She went to her grave having only seen him once, but it only took one time to know that she loved him with every fibre of her being._

 _He looks at her with eyes that are wide with fear and he begs her to get him out of the dark. It's because she loves him that she doesn't correct him._

 _It's not dark in this place at all. She wishes it was. The dark would hide it._

 _She'd have known that was the place he'd died even if they weren't standing next to the silent form of what was once Spencer Reid._

* * *

When she gets her computers working again, the picture of the man is frozen on one of her monitors. She doesn't know how she knows it, but she's sure that this is the man they're looking for.

The team return and she hands them a file filled with everything she'd come up with on him.

Harold John Williams.

She tells them everything she's found. He was in every one of the cities the girls had lived in at the time of the murders, he was once arrested for assaulting a woman at a bus stop.

She tells them that he bought a plane ticket to Virginia from Georgia a week before Spencer had disappeared, and that he had gone off the grid since then.

She tells them everything except for that heart stopping moment before the power went out in her office, when for a split second she saw Spencer standing behind her with his eyes furious and cold and locked on the monitor where the image of his murderer was shown.

She's not entirely sure if she keeps this from them because she's worried they'll think she's mad, or because she's worried that they'll believe her.


	4. 298 Days

**298 Days**

 **.**

 **.**

 _He finds that with enough focus he can create a copy of the conference room's whiteboard in the library, showing the details of his case. He spends so much time stepping from between the two identical boards to make sure that his is perfect that even Maeve's patience is tested._

 _"You can't spend the rest of eternity obsessing over this," she pleads of him, seated at one of the tables in the library and watching him pace restlessly in front of the board._

 _He can hear the worry in her tone and something in him rebels at the thought that he's once again causing her pain, but every moment he spends not working on his case tears at him. He hears her sigh as he ignores her again and then silence as she steps away to wherever she goes without him._

 _He thinks that maybe he should show more of an interest in her, make the most of this chance they've gotten to be happy, but he can't. There's one detail that chases itself endlessly around his head, mocking him._

 _His killer made it personal. He wanted a reaction._

 _Did he get the reaction he wanted?_

 _Or would he try again?_

* * *

Harold Williams is a ghost. They find plenty on him up until two years ago, then nothing until the time just before Reid disappeared.

Hotch looks in the mirror these days and sees Gideon staring back out at him.

Gideon after Boston, with the lost look of a man who had seen far too many people close to him die before their time.

He looks at his team properly for the first time in months and sees the toll this has taken on them. He sees the new lines on JJ's face as she ages beyond her years, Prentiss' bloody fingernails, and the fact that Rossi's hair is greyer than black these days.

Most worryingly, he sees the raw anger that has still to fade from Morgan's eyes.

He makes the call.

* * *

"No!" Morgan is furious, betrayed.

Rossi stands with the team for once, faced against Hotch. His expression is unreadable but they're all profilers. They know that if he wanted to side with Hotch on this, he wouldn't be standing next to JJ.

Hotch squares his shoulders and turns his face into a mask. Strauss is by his side, breathing slightly too quickly for the calm she's trying to resonate with. "I'm sorry, everyone. But it's been almost seven months, the trail is cold. Williams is a ghost, and it's time we move on to more pressing cases. We can't have our attention split anymore."

"Hotch," JJ cuts in, and he heads her off before she can voice the words that will derail this meeting.

"My word is final. Reid's case is closed. He's dead and unless we have more information, it's over."

Prentiss is the only one who looks resigned, the only one who'll meet his eyes. Hotch tries to catch Rossi's gaze but the other man looks away and studies a file on a desk. Practised evasion. Morgan walks out, his fist slamming into the wall.

Hotch wonders if he'll come back.

He wouldn't blame him if he doesn't.

* * *

 _Reid feels anger and pain through the threads connecting him to his team, steps through, and finds himself standing shoulder to shoulder with Morgan in the freezing rain._

 _He shivers, an automatic response from a body that no longer feels the cold and looks about. They're nowhere in particular, a park near the living agent's house. Nothing to point to why his friend is standing in the rain in the middle of a park, watching the trees sway in the wind._

 _He doesn't have to be a profiler to see how much his friend is hurting. There's no tears, no screams or anguished shouts. He can see the pain in the slumped set of his friend's shoulders, the slight downturn of his mouth._

 _"They can't see us," Maeve says softly, stepping out behind him. "But they seem to know we're still around. My parents were the same. They won't move on while we're still here."_

 _Spencer tries to catch a raindrop and watches the rain fall through his hand as though it isn't there at all. He doesn't remember what it's like to feel rain on his skin, just a vague memory of the sensation of cold. "Did you watch me after you died?"_

 _Morgan finally walks away slowly, as though his grief is a visible weight he carries. Reid feels his tenuous connection weaken as the profiler moves further away, pulling them back towards the library. Maeve takes his hand, squeezing slightly. "Once. Only once. I couldn't bear it."_

 _They step back together. "Ok," Reid whispers, turning his back on the whiteboard. He's not doing his friends any favours by haunting them. "Ok."_

 _It's time._

* * *

 **The pathetic agent is a fading memory. He's been patient, endlessly patient, and still the remaining team have failed to find him. They failed to want revenge enough to find him.**

 **He knew he should have gone for the boss of the team, or one of the women.**

 **The boss would have lasted longer, not given up like a weakling.**

 **The women's screams would have given him so much more pleasure, just like his girls did.**

 **He intends them to carry the scars of his actions for the rest of their lives.**

 **He intends to try again until they get the message.**

* * *

Morgan comes back.

They get a new team member, and he's not as smart as Reid (who is?) but he's a good fit. He works well with the team.

JJ laughs again.

It's been nine months and they're healing.

Garcia stops glancing around her room every time she turns the light on, looking for something she's not quite sure was real in the first place.

* * *

 _They don't move on, not quite yet, and Maeve tells him to be patient, it will happen when it's ready. He doesn't follow the threads of his team again, and eventually they fade enough that he stops noticing them._

 _Time passes pleasantly enough._

* * *

On the two hundredth and ninety-seventh day, 10am comes and goes and JJ's desk remains empty.

Rossi looks at Hotch and in the unit chief's expression he sees a nightmare that they've never truly escaped.


	5. 302 Days

**302 Days**

 **.**

 **.**

On the fifth day, JJ opens her eyes to darkness and the vague smell of rot.

She doesn't scream because she won't give the bastard the satisfaction.

* * *

There's a frenzied quality to their actions and a haunted feeling of déjà vu. It's as though time is moving in shuddering gasps; one moment quick and smooth, the next moment drawing out into eternity.

There's the frantic calls to law enforcement, hospitals and morgues, calls which later Hotch can't recall any details from, only that they happened.

Morgan is alternately hyper-focused or inconsolable. They can't help but look at him and see how Spencer was the day Maeve went missing. The day she died.

Garcia can't feel anything. She can't let herself. She sits in her office, door closed, silent and still under the glow of the monitors. They're running checks on JJ's phone, on sightings, on anything she can think of that will help them find their friend.

When she closes her eyes she imagines the last time she saw JJ, as she hurried out the door after work. Except when she imagines it again, this time Spencer is by JJ's side and they walk out hand in hand.

They can't survive losing another team member. They can't put another member in the ground.

 _Oh god, Spencer,_ Garcia thinks to herself, as loudly as possible. "Please. Please, if you can hear me… help us. Don't let JJ die alone."

Don't let JJ die like you did.

* * *

 _He doesn't sleep, not really, but he can fade out enough that it's almost like sleeping. He does it somewhat often, because he finds something calming in slowly waking and finding Maeve still by his side._

 _There's nothing calming in the way he wakes this day, fear racing through him and making him shake with the strength of it._

 _He recognises all the sensations with it – the smell of damp earth, mildew, and rot; the way the ties around his wrists cut as he shifts his body and dig into his skin, the sound of silence broken only by his ragged breathing and the soft dripping of water just outside of his view._

 _He recognises all the sensations but for one difference._

 _He's not the one feeling them._

* * *

She hasn't seen the man who brought her here, not since he dumped her in this hole two days before. He tied her down and then left, the feel of his greasy skin against her at odds with the smell of mint on his breath. There's nothing in the room when she examines it, her heart beating dully in her chest, except for the chair she's tied onto, a single lightbulb, a barred window and a piece of rubbish disposed of in one corner.

She twists and turns in her bounds, trying to swivel enough that she can see what the item is. The chair must be bolted firmly to the floor, as it resists all her attempts to move it.

She keeps herself busy at her task, trying not to imagine Spence tied to this same chair awaiting a rescue that had never come. Trying not to think of Henry, or Will, or her parents who had already buried one daughter.

Eventually she manages to get a better view of the debris, feeling savagely accomplished as she hooks a foot around it and pulls it closer, even as blood runs down her wrists from the ties.

She studies it for far too long before she realizes what it is and for a moment all she can focus on is breathing, just continuing to breathe.

The shirt is bloodstained, filthy and achingly familiar. Clearly left to frighten and shock her. It works.

She still doesn't scream.

* * *

 _Maeve finds him standing by the whiteboard in their library, except what had once been pictures of his death is now pictures of his life._

 _Pictures of him and his team, his mom. Laughing. Alive._

 _He's frozen, staring at the pictures as though they're something he's only newly remembering, and she wonders if he's ever felt what it's like to forget something before now._

 _She can tell something is wrong by the way he refuses to meet her eyes when she walks up to him. He's shaking slightly against her, and she knows that where he has to go now, she won't be able to follow him._

 _"You didn't tell me I'd forget them," he says and his voice is like shattered glass. "And now they're hurting, one of them is hurting, and I don't know how to find them."_

 _She takes his hand in hers, and fancies she can see the shadows of bruises on the delicate skin of his wrists. She makes her choice and shows him how to find the faded remains of his ties to the living._

 _She thinks of what he was like when she first found him, faded almost beyond salvation. They're not immortal, not even in their spirit forms. Some fade away when staying becomes too much for them. Some get what they've been waiting for and go happily._

 _Some burn themselves out trying to interact with the living. That's the risk. There's no coming back from that._

 _He doesn't ask her if she'll still be there when he returns, they both know she'll wait for him._

 _She doesn't ask him if he's coming back, they both know he'll do what he has to._

 _He kisses her like he's saying goodbye and this time when he steps away, she can't feel him anymore._

 _She waits._

* * *

On the fifth day, JJ opens her eyes and Spencer is there.

She'd have thought that she'd finally gone crazy, except he's not how she'd have expected to hallucinate him.

He's dressed exactly as he was the last time she'd seen him, right down to the shirt that lies tattered under her feet. He doesn't say anything. Just watches her with terrified eyes under the hair that has always just hung on the awkward side of long.

She catches her breath and the longing to reach over and brush it out of his eyes is overwhelming.

 _"Spence?" she says with a voice that breaks, wondering how long it takes to go mad._

* * *

 _He steps back and forth between the hellhole where he'd found JJ, and the conference room where his team sit in a broken group. The table holds two spaces that weren't there before and somehow those empty places seem to contain all the air in the room._

 _They're not trying to solve the case, they're not desperately searching for their second missing colleague, and they're not living up to his expectations at all. Cruz stands in front of them and tells them that they can't work this case, not again, and not one of them argues with him._

 _He can't help but feel betrayed._

 _He screams at them and lashes out, frantically trying to move something, make something happen to tell them he's there, JJ is alive, don't give up. He tries to grab at Hotch's shirt but his hands slip off as though he's trying to hold water._

 _He goes back to JJ feeling sick._

* * *

 _The further from JJ he goes, the harder it is to hold on, but he keeps trying. Leaving the room she's locked in is simple, just sliding through the door._

 _He couldn't have done it back when he was in his apartment, but everything is a little more unsubstantial these days._

 _Walking up the stairs outside of her room proves to be a challenge and every step increases the aching feeling in his chest. It's as though he's tearing himself apart from the inside out._

 _He finds it helps to focus on putting his foot down, to feel it firmly plant on the stair before he takes another step. He's panting slightly, it's truly a physical effort to climb a simple set of stairs and the ache blooms into a weariness that drags him down._

 _When he steps onto the top step and it creaks under his weight, he stops in shock and finds himself back in the room with JJ, staring at her with a startled expression._

She looks up at him and her eyes widen as they meet his. "Spence?"

* * *

Morgan welcomes the numbness that comes with giving up. They aren't allowed to work the case, Cruz is one breakdown away from putting them all on long-term stress leave and dissolving their team, and he can't face the look in Hotch's eyes.

He knows all too well what will happen to them all. They'll splinter apart, unable to face each other with their collective failures, their shared memories of their friends forming a wedge between them.

Emily will lose herself in her work.

They'll lose Hotch to the bottom of a bottle, or to his gun on some cold, lonely night when the memories become too much.

Morgan doesn't know how he'll lose himself, but he knows he isn't far off of it.

The sound of the door to the conference room slamming open barely registers, even as Garcia bursts through, choking out words around strangled sobs. "S-Sir! JJ's phone! It's been turned back on, I have a location! I've found her, guys, I've found her!"

The atmosphere in the room changes immediately and Morgan sees the hope that flares up in every one of his team members.

They're going to bring their teammate home. They won't fail again.


	6. 302 plus Days

**302+ Days**

 **.**

 **.**

He can't speak to her.

He doesn't have the words.

Instead he turns and slips back out the door and tries to climb the stairs again, ignoring the shuddering sob that echoes from the room behind him.

* * *

His phone rings loudly. It breaks the charged atmosphere in the room as Garcia frantically tries to call JJ's location up on the plasma.

When Hotch glances down at it and sees JJ's caller ID, he almost drops the phone in relief.

Every eye in the room turns to him as he clicks answer and almost barks her name down the line. He can't look at any of them, can't meet their eyes, as they all seem to collectively hold their breaths waiting for a reply.

"Jayje?" Emily says, her voice cracking with worry as she steps towards the phone.

A single word before the line shorts out.

 _"Hotch."_

* * *

 _She's cold. It's the kind of cold that sinks deep into your skin and bones, making you slow and drained. She can feel the exhaustion that comes with that kind of cold, her body shaking helplessly._

 _It's some small relief to her that it's the kind of cold that eventually turns fatal. At least with that kind of death, it's peaceful._

 _She hears the floorboards creak above her, and closes her eyes._

* * *

They move towards the house as a group, unwilling to split up this one time. Grim faces above their FBI emblazoned vests, guns drawn and one shared link of sanity between them.

Morgan hesitates just a moment before kicking in the door, turning back to look at his team and nod.

For better or for worse, this is it. This is the end.

* * *

"That was Spencer's voice." Garcia is the first one to say it. Hotch hasn't looked up from the silent phone since the line had cut, terrified of what he'd see in his team's eyes.

He hadn't wanted to be the first to say it.

"He's dead," Rossi says, and it's a statement of fact. "We saw those photos. He's dead."

Hotch shakes his head, laughing loudly and startling them all. Rossi doesn't know. Rossi wasn't there. This isn't the first time they'd seen Reid brought back from the dead. They've all seen it before, except Rossi. He knows he looks mad, knows that his inappropriate laughter is unsettling them all, but he can't bring himself to care.

He'd given the order, he'd given up on Reid. He should have known better. They'd seen him come back before.

"Hotch," Emily repeats, and he realizes she's been repeating his name over and over to catch his attention.

He knows he's not crazy because when he meets her concerned gaze, her face is damp from tears.

Fear or relief, he doesn't even know the difference anymore.

* * *

He makes it up the stairs and through the barred door, and he can _feel himself unravelling like a badly packaged ball of wool._

 _He's in a kitchen, a startlingly normal kitchen, and he has no idea what to do next._

 _More steps away, towards the door to a dining area, and the world begins to blur slightly around him. He can't tell anymore if he's the ghost, or if his surroundings are just as insubstantial as he is._

 _Maybe none of it is real and this is his penance for his sins._

 _He's on his knees with no recollection of falling and he stays like that for a moment on the cold floorboards, trying desperately to hold on to who he is._

 _When he finally_ steels himself and raises his gaze, the first thing he sees is JJ's gun.

The second thing he sees is her phone.

* * *

The door splinters under his foot and they move in as one cohesive unit, splintering apart to clear every room.

The house is normal. They shouldn't be surprised by this anymore, they'd seen it all before, but for some reason this case feels so personal, so targeted, that they'd expected more.

Prentiss is the first to walk into the kitchen, almost tripping over the phone that lays prone on the floor.

She picks it up and no amount of coaxing will turn it back on, but she recognises it as JJ's.

Morgan nudges her and points silently towards the basement door. It sits slightly ajar, revealing nothing more than a sliver of shadow, but the heavy bar attached speaks for itself.

Hotch and Rossi are moments behind, and they enter the basement two by two.

* * *

 _His fingers fumble and slip through the phone as though it's made of smoke, and he grits his teeth against the frustration. Memories of agile fingers weaving illusions and tricks haunt him, and he takes a careful bre_ ath before trying again.

He finds that if he focuses intently upon the phone, he can pick it up and ho _ld it in carefully cupped hands. It's a disconcerting sensation, almost like he's pouring himself into the small device in his hands, and he fights the urge to throw it away from him._

Turning it on is a careful c _hallenge, wary of the time he'd shorted ou_ t his TV.

He doesn't let himself revel in the glory of success when the screen lights up. He can't be sure that Garcia is tracing the phone right now.

He's relatively sure she is, but in his line of work it always pays to be certain.

There's no question of who to call. _I knew you'd understand_.

Only when the line connects and Hotch's voice barks out of the phone does he allow himself to breathe.

 _"Hotch."_

* * *

 **For a moment he's sure the woman has escaped.**

 **The slight rustle of fabric against floorboard is followed by a soft tune through tinny speakers.**

 **He moves downstairs, holding his shotgun steady and ready to blow the bitch away if she'd dared to defy him.**

 **A soft voice, one that for some reason turns his bowels to water and makes the gun shake in his hands.**

 **He walks into the empty kitchen and almost shoots the phone as it drops from mid-air and clatters to the ground.**

 **He's never been one to believe in ghosts.**

* * *

 _He hears the stairs creak from above and panics, stepping back down to the cell where JJ is held captive._

 _Her eyes are closed and he notes with concern the blueish tinge to her lips and pallid skin._

 _He has to crouch next to her to reach her hands bound behind her back. He slips his fingers around hers and squeezes tightly, dropping his forehead against her chest and listening to the soft sound of her heartbeat._

 _All they can do is wait. It's up to their team now._

 _It takes him a second to realize the moisture on his face isn't his._

* * *

She wakes to his hand in hers and his head against her chest, and she thinks for a moment that she's dead.

Except she figures that if she's dead, she wouldn't still be tied to this chair.

She doesn't even realize she's crying until she sees a tear slip off her chin and drip onto him, making him start slightly with shock.

He finally turns his face up to hers and he's somehow less than he was when she saw him earlier even though she can feel his fingers against her skin. His eyes are tired, his skin drawn tight against his face, and she can see the effort he's taking to hold himself together.

"Are you really here?" she asks and then she's crying helplessly and he has his arms around her.

 _"Yes."_

"Can you stay?"

He shakes his head against her, and she can feel her heart breaking all over again.

"You're gone, aren't you?" She has to know. She's needed to know since she saw him slip away through the door like a mist, she's had hours to contemplate when she would join him.

 _"Yes."_

Even expected, it hurts.

They hear the door open above them, the sound of _his_ feet on the stairs. JJ tries to wipe her tears away on her shoulders, refusing to let him see her weakness, but she can't hide her terror.

"Don't leave me," she says, and it's the closest she's come to begging in the five days she's been here.

They can feel the moment slipping away from them. He stands in front of her, blocking her view of the door, hand gripping her shoulder tightly and eyes locked on hers.

 _"JJ, tell Henry I'm sorry I didn't get to see him grow up. Tell the others I miss them. Tell them I never blamed them."_ He's saying the things he didn't get given a chance to say before, and she wishes he would stop. It's too final, too much like giving in to the inevitable, but she nods and tells him she will anyway.

The sound of a key grating in the lock of her door.

 _"I love you, JJ. I always have, always will."_

* * *

Morgan is in front and it's him who first sees Williams with the shotgun pointed towards JJ. He moves as fast as he can but he's not at the right angle to shoot, and he knows he can't reach her before he pulls the trigger.

When the shotgun jerks upwards as it fires, the wall behind JJ's head exploding into a cloud of dust, Williams staggering back in shock, Morgan doesn't even think. He just shoots.

The man who'd torn all their lives apart is dead before he hits the ground. Morgan's bullet ends his life.

Not one of the agents pays him any care, except to make sure that he is truly dead, as they push through to reach their friend.

Her arms are useless, numb from being tied for five days, so she can't reciprocate the hug that Emily pulls her into. JJ leans against her friend and savours the warmth of the other agent's body, no longer trying to hide the tears in her eyes.

Morgan leans back against a wall, watching the two women comfort each other. Rossi behind radios for a medic. He tries to comprehend that it is finally over. It's over.

She's safe. God knows how, but she is.

* * *

It's Hotch who finds the loosely packed grave and when the medics take JJ away with Emily at her side, Rossi and Morgan meet him by there.

"We don't have to do this," Morgan tells him softly, seeing the shock clouding their unit chief. They had all seen the vicious relief that had overtaken him upon hearing that voice on the phone. They had seen his despair when he picked up the torn shirt in JJ's cell and studied it.

There's nothing so destructive as hope.

 _A vicious prank,_ Morgan thinks to himself. The unsub just getting in one last blow, playing a recorded snippet of Spencer's voice.

When they uncover the sad remains, Rossi can't help but think that this isn't closure, not really. There's nothing left of the man they'd known in the bare bones and rotten clothes. Nothing to speak of the life he'd led, the friends he'd left.

Hotch is silent.

* * *

JJ doesn't tell anyone about what she'd seen in that cell at first. She knows what they'd say to her, knows they'll blame it on shock and the hypothermia that had almost taken her life.

When they bury his body for real and people shake their heads and talk about finally having closure, she thinks that they have no idea.

She thinks that maybe, out of all of them, she might be the only one who can really move on from this.

* * *

Garcia comes to her first, and tells her about the phone call that no one is talking about, and JJ doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

She does neither and instead tells the analyst about what she'd seen.

"I didn't want you to think I was crazy," she finishes, finally. Garcia is silent for a moment before taking her hand.

"There isn't one of us that heard that voice that would call you crazy."

She tells the others and she's glad she did, even though she can't tell if they believe her because they want to, or because they have no other explanation.

"Do you think he's still here?" Morgan asks her, and there's a hint of bitterness there that it was her that got the goodbye they were all cheated of.

"No," JJ says, honestly. "Would you stay, if you were him?"

She hopes that maybe he's finally earned his happy ending.

* * *

 _Maeve finds him in the library and there's something so alive about him in that moment that she knows she never needed to fear._

 _"Three-hundred and two days since I was taken," he says to her, but there's no sadness in his eyes. "And it's finally over."_

 _She doesn't really know what to say so she just lets him hug her, the breaths he's not really taking tickling her ear._

 _"Did you know," he murmurs softly, and she can feel him smile against her skin. "That there are three-hundred and two ways to play the first three moves in a game of Checkers?"_

 _They take the next step together._


End file.
